Ubisoft: Wii U is "Surprisingly Powerful"

Nintendo's Wii has always struggled to fit in with its much more capable current-generation counterparts. Not surprisingly, gamers have been quite vocal about the Wii U as well, fearing that Nintendo may have made the same mistake again. For its part, Ubisoft doesn't seem terribly concerned about the Wii U's capabilities, telling Nintendo Power that the console is actually "surprisingly powerful."

"What surprises me with Wii U is that we don't have many technical problems," explains Rayman creator Michel Ancel, "It's really running very well, in fact. We're not obliged to constantly optimize things. Even on the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions [of Rayman Origins], we had some fill-rate issues and things like that. So it's partly us - we improved the engine - but I think the console is quite powerful. Surprisingly powerful."

Ancel goes on to say that one particularly impressive aspect of the Wii U is its ability to handle large textures without issue. He admits that sometimes, during the course of developing Rayman Legends, the team forgot to compress certain HD texture files before testing them in-game, and it didn't bog down the console.

Of course, we're talking about a 2D platformer here - not a massive 3D action game. So while his experience is an interesting glimpse into the world of Wii U development, it remains unclear whether the Wii U will be able to stand toe-to-toe with whatever Microsoft and Sony are cooking up for the next gen.